Baptizing the Gun

I rarely read short stories published in The New Yorker. I try, but most of the time I don't like subject, style, or story fails to engage. It takes a couple of sentences written by good writer to suck me in. Very few authors text works on me this way. Baptizing the Gun by Nigerian writers Uwem Akpan did exactly that. I never been to Africa, but after reading first two lines I was felt engulfed with sounds and smells of African roadside. Lagos, 8 million desperate souls megalopolis. I was invisible on the back seat of battered red Volkswagen Beetle driven by main character in addition to his unwanted passenger on a road trip in Nigeria... I kept reading, missed my Subway stop, sign of good writing.

 

PIETER HUGO Escort Kama. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008

If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one. (M.H.)

If I read fiction I prefer French authors for their philosophical references, wit and dash of misanthropy. Michel Houellebecq's work is my latest find. Started with The Possibility of an Island and got instantly hooked up. Michel Houellebecq sees world as it really is, the place where the blind leading the blind. It's hard not to agree with many of his observations expressed through his character's inner monologs. Like:
"Without beauty a girl is unhappy because she has missed her chance to be loved. People do not jeer at her, they are not cruel to her, but it is as if she were invisible, no eyes follow her as she walks. People feel uncomfortable when they are with her. They find it easier to ignore her. A girl who is exceptionally beautiful, on the other hand, who has something which too far surpasses the customary seductive freshness of adolescence, appears somehow unreal. Great beauty seems invariably to portend some tragic fate." (Michel Houellebecq, Les particules elémentaires)